An interview with a book app designer:'There are do-it-yourself programs out there, and many authors have a techy friend who may want to practice on their material, but I recommend a professional developer, who, in addition to being up-to-date technologically and contributing creatively, will put the app in the App store, do the necessary updates and bug fixes, and may even help market it, which is no easy matter.

Reading for the print disabled'Yes, we have braille for braille readers, but we also have resources for people with low vision ' the inability to read standard print even with glasses. I also explain that the definition of 'physical handicap' includes not just people who are unable to hold a book or turn the pages but also, in some situations, people with reading disabilities. Simple.

Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster are having a fight, and authors are losing.'Barnes & Noble would not confirm that it had reduced Simon & Schuster books as leverage. But Simon & Schuster editors, as well as agents and writers who work with them, are apoplectic on the subject, since Barnes & Noble accounts for about 20 percent of consumer book spending and is a main conduit for publicizing new releases.

Walter Mason on keeping yourself inspired as a writer'Its easy to get lazy in our reading, especially, I think, in this distracted age where we demand instant gratification. But reading some of the literary greats serves as a discipline, an education and an almost-religious instruction in what it is to be exceptional, and to be an artist.

Anna Spargo-Ryan on her first mentorship session'Tonight, and maybe it is a bit uncouth to say this aloud, but this extraordinarily lovely woman told me she had read what I'd written and that it was beautiful and polished. That no sentences were wasted. And that she 'struggled to fault [my] prose.''After I'd hung up the Skype call and done a little dance on Twitter, I sat at my desk and I cried and cried.

Richard Nash asks what is the business of literature?'Current accounts of publishing have the industry about as imperiled as the book, and the presumption is that if we lose publishing, we lose good books. Yet what we have right now is a system that produces great literature in spite of itself. We have come to believe that the taste-making, genius-discerning editorial activity attached to the selection, packaging, printing, and distribution of books to retailers is central to the value of literature.